International Center on Nonviolent Conflict

Recovering Nonviolent History: Civil Resistance in Liberation Struggles

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Dr. Maciej Bartkowski, Senior Director, Education and Research at ICNC
Thursday, June 6, 2013 / 12:00pm – 1:00pm EST

The modern practice of civil resistance sprang from the ideas about the underlying nature of political power and agency of people that began to be formed much earlier in history than many realize.

In fact, as the newly edited book Recovering Nonviolent History. Civil Resistance in Liberation Struggles shows, in the last two centuries, many societies – regardless of geographical, cultural, religious, or political settings –  engaged in successful nonviolent resistance to defend themselves from foreign domination and protect their national communities.

In the age of revolutions, rise of violent nationalism, independence wars, brutal anti-colonial struggles and major internal and regional wars the history hides important nonviolent campaigns that were led by ordinary people with the aim of reclaiming their rights to self-rule.

This webinar talk will discuss the power and dynamics of civil resistance, bring up stories of unarmed struggles, often buried beneath eulogized violence, and account for denials of civil resistance in national annals.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Political Defiance in today’s Russia: Its Successes and Challenges

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Oleg Kozlovsky, Fulbright Visiting Scholar, George Washington University 
Tuesday, March 26, 2013 / 12:00pm – 1:00pm EST

In December 2011 tens of thousands of Russians went to the streets of Moscow and other cities to protest fraud at recent parliamentary elections. This was a shock to the regime as well as the opposition even though both had long been preparing for mass demonstrations. The protests, though truly spontaneous and surprising, were by no means random. Instead, they were a result of gradual but radical changes in the Russian society due in no small part to contained but persistent political, social and cultural activism and autonomous civic organizing of previous years.

The regime responded with charges of propaganda and repression, which might have slowed down the resistance but did not suppress it. Facing a stalemate, the Russian protest movement now has to find new methods and tactics, increase its internal mobilization and outreach to other segments of the society and stay united.

Additional Resources

The Effect of Nonviolent Palestinian Protests on Israeli Perceptions of the Conflict

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Nichole Argo, Postdoctoral Fellow in Social and Decision Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University
February 21, 2013

We surveyed Israelis in June 2012 to see how reminders of these nonviolent protests affected their perceptions of Palestinians, prospects for peace, their own sacred values, and more generally, their belief that groups can change. To our surprise, reminders of the protests led to negative assessments across all of these measures—more so than did reminders of Palestinian violence, or even stories of traffic woes.

This presentation focuses on the results of the survey, as well as what it may tell us about the process by which nonviolent campaigns affect intergroup psychology and transformation, particularly where there is a history (or competing strain) of violence.

Abstract

Nonviolent protest and campaigning is meant to delegitimize the adversary’s use of force, in particular because of it’s ability to captivate greater public support than a military campaign might. In part, this is a psychological transformation: for individuals, politics is reconceived as a moral issue, and for previously adversarial groups, perceptions and identities are redrawn. Most recently, the world has witnessed such transformations with the Arab Spring.

Therefore, many have asked, why don’t we see more nonviolent protest in the Palestinian Territories? In fact, Palestinians in places like Budrus and Bi’ilin have embraced a rigorous nonviolent campaign, and have even achieved some political gains. While these protests have not garnered massive media attention within Israeli society, most Israelis are aware of them. Thus, one major question is: How have they affected Israelis?

We surveyed Israelis in June 2012 to see how reminders of these nonviolent protests affected their perceptions of Palestinians, prospects for peace, their own sacred values, and more generally, their belief that groups can change. To our surprise, reminders of the protests led to negative assessments across all of these measures—more so than did reminders of Palestinian violence, or even stories of traffic woes.

This presentation focuses on the results of the survey, as well as what it may tell us about the process by which nonviolent campaigns affect intergroup psychology and transformation, particularly where there is a history (or competing strain) of violence.

Additional Resources

How Communities Use Nonviolent Strategies to Avoid Civil War Violence

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Dr. Oliver Kaplan, Lecturer in Human Rights at the Josef Korbel School, University of Denver
Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Civilians would seem powerless when facing violent and heavily armed actors in settings of civil conflict, and yet communities in various countries have found ways to avoid violence. In this presentation Dr. Kaplan discusses the various strategies he has documented that communities from around the world have used to retain autonomy and self-rule in the face of competition among multiple armed groups.

Abstract

Civilians would seem powerless when facing violent and heavily armed actors in settings of civil conflict, and yet communities in various countries have found ways to avoid violence. In this presentation Dr. Kaplan discusses the various strategies he has documented that communities from around the world have used to retain autonomy and self-rule in the face of competition among multiple armed groups.

Since armed actor coercion of (and violence against) civilians has been theorized to stem from divisions within civilian societies, Dr. Kaplan argues that social cohesion among civilian communities affords them greater chances to implement nonviolent collective strategies to deceive and influence armed actors and defend their communities. He explores how these strategies vary in their organizational requirements, contentiousness, and probable effectiveness. These strategies illustrate that the unity of unarmed civilians can help impede and isolate violent “extremists.”

Additional Resources

Sustaining a Movement: The Resilience of Brazilian Women in a Nonviolent Struggle for Rights

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Jeffrey W. Rubin and Emma Sokoloff-Rubin
January 25, 2013

In 1986, a group of young Brazilian women started a movement to secure economic rights for rural women and transform women’s roles in their homes and communities. Together with activists across the country, they built a new democracy and fought for women’s rights in the wake of a military dictatorship. Jeffrey W. Rubin and Emma Sokoloff-Rubin, a father-daughter research team, tell the behind-the-scenes story of this remarkable movement.

Abstract

In 1986, a group of young Brazilian women started a movement to secure economic rights for rural women and transform women’s roles in their homes and communities. Together with activists across the country, they built a new democracy and fought for women’s rights in the wake of a military dictatorship. Jeffrey W. Rubin and Emma Sokoloff-Rubin, a father-daughter research team, tell the behind-the-scenes story of this remarkable movement.

Starting in 2002, Rubin and Sokoloff-Rubin traveled together to southern Brazil, where they interviewed activists over the course of ten years. Their vivid descriptions of women’s lives reveal the hard work of sustaining a social movement in the years after initial victories, when the political way forward was no longer clear and the goal of remaking gender roles proved more difficult than activists had ever imagined. Highlighting the tensions within the movement about how best to effect change, their work ultimately shows that democracies need nonviolent social movements in order to improve people’s lives and create a more just society.

Jeffrey W. Rubin is Associate Professor of History and Research Associate, Institute on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs, Boston University. Emma Sokoloff-Rubin, a recent Yale graduate, is a reporter for Gotham Schools. Rubin and Sokoloff-Rubin are coauthors of Sustaining Activism: A Brazilian Women’s Movement and a Father-Daughter Collaboration.

Additional Resources

Download PowerPoint slides

Strategic Nonviolent Struggle in the Middle East Before the ‘Arab Spring’

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Dr. Benedetta Berti, Associate Fellow and Lecturer, Tel Aviv University
January 17, 2013

This webinar is transcribed into Chinese

Contrary to the conventional narrative Middle Eastern civil society has been active and involved in strategic non-violent struggle for years before the beginning of the massive social and political mobilizations of 2010 and 2011. The presentation looks at the characteristics of civil society and social movements in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region-focusing specifically on Tunisia and Egypt-describing the civil Society and social movements in the Middle East before the “Arab Awakening.”

Additional Resources

What if Gandhi had a Smartphone?

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Presented by: Dr. Joseph Bock, Director of Global Health Training at the Eck Institute for Global Health, University of Notre Dame, and Author of “The Technology of Nonviolence”
Wednesday, December 5, 2012

This webinar is transcribed into Chinese

Engaging in nonviolent resistance for political transformation during Gandhi’s struggles in South Africa and British India has many similarities to more modern approaches.  Some people claim that social media is the main ingredient.  Is that correct?  What technologies are most important?  What else is needed for the success of nonviolent movements that social media cannot provide? Can’t technology also be used by oppressive governments and troublemakers?  Can’t they use the information on digital maps that everyone else can see on the internet?  And what happens when cell phone and internet services are interrupted or shut down completely?

Additional Resources

  • Bock, Joseph G. The Technology of Nonviolence: Social Media and Violence Prevention. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012. Learn more
  • Chenoweth, Erica. “Why Civil Resistance Works.” ICNC Webinar, delivered April 8, 2010. Available online
  • Johansen, Robert C.  “Radical Islam and Nonviolence: A Case Study of Religious Empowerment and Constraint Among Pashtuns,” Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 34, No. 1, 1997, p. 64. Available online
  • Just Peace International, Inc.
  • Leson, Heather. “Re-Imagining Citizen Engagement.” Slideshare, February 24, 2012. Available online
    Review of Why Civilian Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict, by Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011, in Dynamics of Asymmetric Conflict: Pathways toward terrorism and genocide, Vol. 5, Issue 1, 2012: 74-76. Available online

Civil Resistance 2.0: Digital Enhancements to the 198 Nonviolent Methods

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Presented by: Mary Joyce, Researcher & Consultant in Global Digital Activism, Editor of “Digital Activism Decoded”
Thursday, November 29, 2012, 12:00pm – 1:00pm EST

This webinar is transcribed into Chinese

Gene Sharp created his list of 198 nonviolent methods in 1973. In the years since, media has become dramatically more accessible to activists. Media produced by activists can now have mass reach at low cost thanks to the ease of creating user-generated content and the multiple platforms that allow for near-free self-broadcast to a mass audience in a variety of textual and visual formats. How can the canon of nonviolent methods intelligently integrate these new capacities?

This presentation will review the initial findings of Digital 198, a crowdsourced project by Patrick Meier and Mary Joyce, that is collecting digital enhancements to the 198 analog nonviolent methods as well as new methods made possible by the peer-produced, self-broadcasted, highly attention-competitive, and near-free nature of digital me

Additional Resources

Why Nonviolent Revolutions Sometimes Fail: Insights from Civil Resistance Struggles in China, Panama, and Kenya from 1985-1992

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Tuesday, April 24, 2012
12:00pm – 1:00pm EST

This webinar is transcribed into Chinese

In the 1980s, the world was captivated as East Germans brought down the Berlin wall and the Filipino “people power” movement ousted long-standing dictator Ferdinand Marcos.  Yet other civil resistance movements during this time failed to achieve political change.  Researchers have largely focused on successful nonviolent uprisings. Little attention has been given to those movements that had great potential but did not achieve their goals.  In this webinar, Dr. Nepstad explores three cases of failed civil resistance: the Chinese democracy movement of 1989, the struggle against Panamanian dictator General Manuel Noriega (1987-1989), and the attempt in Kenya to oust President Daniel arap Moi (1985-1992).

She highlights internal movement problems that undermined resisters’ effectiveness such as divided leadership, lack of cross-group cooperation, and insufficient nonviolent discipline.  She also focuses on regime counter-strategies, including massive repression, maintaining troop loyalty, and the fragmentation of opposition groups. Additionally, Dr. Nepstad examines the impact of international sanctions, showing how they can generate new allies for authoritarian leaders and shift the locus of power from local resisters to international actors. She concludes by discussing what civil resisters can do to prevent these problems: building unity by emphasizing resisters’ shared goals; implementing careful measures to ensure nonviolent discipline, encouraging security force defections by increasing the costs of regime loyalty, and making judicious choices about international involvement.

Sharon Erickson Nepstad is Professor of Sociology at the University of New Mexico.  She received her Ph.D. from the University of Colorado and did post-doctoral studies at Princeton University. She has been a visiting scholar at Notre Dame University’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.  Her areas of interest are in social movements, civil resistance, and religion. She is the author of numerous articles and three books: Nonviolent Revolutions: Civil Resistance in the Late 20th Century (published in 2011 by Oxford University Press); Religion and War Resistance in the Plowshares Movement (published in 2008, Cambridge University Press); and Convictions of the Soul: Religion, Culture, and Agency in the Central America Solidarity Movement  (published in 2004, Oxford University Press).  Her book on the Plowshares movement won the 2009 Outstanding Book Award from the American Sociological Association’s section on Peace, War, and Social Conflict.

Additional Resources

Anatomy of an Occupation: Did the Planners of Occupy Wall Street Really Have a Plan?

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Thursday, March 8, 2012
12:00pm-1:00pm EST

When Occupy Wall Street and the ensuing Occupy movement captured the world’s attention in the fall of 2011, the world wasn’t exactly sure what hit it. Through a series of up-close portraits of the movement in both planning and execution, this webinar will explore how it has succeeded as well as what its challenges will be in the coming months. Drawing from his experience covering the Occupy movement since the early planning stages, Nathan Schneider will focus on the role of strategizing.

The story of Occupy Wall Street, of course, is not solely one about Occupy Wall Street. This was just one among other daring attempts to mount major mobilizations in the United States that season, several of which I was covering concurrently. As the Occupy movement spread, it became ever more clear that what was taking place was one manifestation of an emerging global movement. Now, as the movement enters an election year in the United States, it faces the challenge of launching a cluster of focused, interrelated campaigns, as well as mounting successful mass mobilizations that can change the media narrative and win tangible gains.

Nathan Schneider is an editor of Waging Nonviolence, a website of news and analysis on struggles for justice and peace around the world. Beginning in July and August of 2011, he was the first journalist to be allowed to cover the planning of what would become the Occupy movement. He has since written about it for Harper’s, The New York Times, The Nation, the Boston Review, Truthout, Yes! magazine, The Catholic Worker, and more. He has also contributed to two of Occupy Wall Street’s print publications, The Occupied Wall Street Journal and Tidal: Occupy Theory, Occupy Strategy.

Additional Resources

  • Download Presentation slides
  • Schneider, Nathan. “Dreaming Big OWS Organizers Plan Spring Offensive.” The Indypendent, Issue 173, January 25, 2012. Available online
  • Schneider, Nathan. “Some Assembly Required: Witnessing the birth of Occupy Wall Street.” Harper’s Magazine, February 2012.  Click here to download
  • Schneider, Nathan. “Thank You, Anarchists.” The Nation, December 19, 2011. Available online
  • Schneider, Nathan. “Who will occupy Wall Street on September 17?” Waging Nonviolence, September 13, 2011. Available online

Civil Resistance in Bahrain: Current Political and Communication Challenges

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Tuesday, November 1, 2011
12:00pm-1:00pm EDT

In this webinar Bahraini journalist Nada Alwadi discusses the ongoing civil resistance movement in Bahrain (a small island monarchy in the Persian Gulf) which has been a part of the recent wave of popular revolts in the Middle East known as the Arab Spring. She revisits the timeline of events in Bahrain beginning in February 2011, when state repression of marches and protests around the country motivated the population to sustain their civil resistance mobilization and call for political reform. She also examines the role of U.S.-backed Saudi Arabia, which sent troops to help shore up the Bahraini monarchy and suppress the popular uprising.

Alwadi sheds light on the media blackout in Bahrain, and the current political and communication challenges facing the country and its society in the wake of a brutal state crackdown on protesters, the media, hospital staff, and ordinary members of the movement. She also relates the untold story of a struggle which has been forgotten and abandoned by the world and received little coverage from international media outlets. Finally, Alwadi discusses the importance of civil resistance in Bahrain and its larger role in building a new, freer Middle East.

Nada Alwadi was a reporter for Alwasat, the most popular newspaper in Bahrain, and covered the pro-democracy protests this spring for multiple local and international media outlets (including USA Today).  Ms. Alwadi was detained in April while reporting on the pro-democracy movement and forced to sign a statement saying that she would not write on or engage in any political activities, and was fired from her job. Ms. Alwadi is the co- founder of the Bahrain Press Association, which seeks to defend Bahraini journalists from government repression.  She chose to leave Bahrain earlier this year due to concerns over her personal safety, and is currently working from the U.S. to spread knowledge about the situation in Bahrain and the Middle East as a whole.

Additional Resources

The Arts of Protest: Creative Cultural Resistance

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Thursday, June 30, 2011
12:00pm-1:00pm EDT

Nadine Bloch, creative resistance and nonviolent direct action educator and practitioner, explores how some of the most impactful and memorable moments from civil resistance and nonviolent movements are sung by the masses, printed by the thousands, enacted through craft, painted in vivid color, or performed in traditional dress. This webinar takes a critical look at Creative Cultural Resistance: the broad use of arts, literature, and traditional practices in the service of protest and political and social actions.

Nadine Bloch teases out the strategic powers of cultural resistance. Through compelling examples this talk covers the immense diversity of methodologies that have been employed in resistance, from 2-D and 3-D arts, to sound/music and theater/movement arts. From literature and crafts, to documentation and delineation of space, as well as rituals and language preservation, we will look at the power of cultural work in organizing, mobilizing and grounding actions.

“Often such little small cultural experiments open up space and possibility for the bigger changes to happen. The real seeds for revolutionary changes can grow in artistic practices.”–John Jordan

“Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.”–Bertolt Brecht

“The role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible.”–Toni Cade Bambara

Additional Resources